Have A Little Faith
by Kat Lee formerly Pirate Turner
Summary: Faith's thoughts on Christmas Eve.


Title: "Have a Little Faith"  
Author: Pirate Turner  
Rating: PG  
Summary: Faith's thoughts on Christmas Eve.  
Disclaimer: Faith, Angel, Buffy Summers, and the Mayor are © & TM their respective owners (Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy?). Everything else is © & TM Pirate Turner. The author makes no profit off of this story.

Dark eyes stared out at the dark night lit only by the city lights from outside the fences that surrounded her prison. She could barely hear the faint strains of laughing, merry voices on the other side of her living Hell, and her heart ached all the more at the sound. She would never know that happiness. She would never know what it was like to truly enjoy Christmas or truly enjoy any holiday with a loving family that she would never have.

She knew she deserved this Hell that had became her life, but that knowledge did not make her heart hurt any less. Indeed, she grieved for the innocent she had killed on this night perhaps more than any other. Although she did not have a family who cared about her, he had had a family who undoubtedly still missed him. She wondered if any cheer had been brought to his family's Christmas celebration this year but knew that no amount of cheer could ever seal the gaping hole she had caused in their life.

It was supposed to be different. Everything in her life should have been different, but it hadn't been. She'd been stuck with parents who didn't care. She'd been handed over to a Watcher who trained her relentlessly and became the only thing she had that even remotely resembled family. That Watcher had been murdered, and that was another death on her hands. Although she had not actually taken her Watcher's life, she should have been capable of stopping the evil that had but had failed miserably. Thereby, she bore the guilt of her Watcher's death just as much as the actual killer did.

She had tried again in Sunnydale. She had tried to be accepted into Buffy's little group. She had tried to be treated equal to the other Slayer as was her right. She had tried to be good and fight beside them at all costs. Again, her plans had failed only this time, when she could not make things work, she had tried to take Buffy down the dark and lonely road with her. When she failed miserably at that, as well, Faith had chosen to again look out for herself alone.

That might have been her biggest mistake of all, Faith realized as she looked back on her tragic life. Perhaps if she hadn't joined the Mayor's side, she would have finally been able to find a place for herself in Sunnydale, but that sole decision had set her destined to no longer have even the slimmest chance at a happy life. Under his orders, she had stolen, fought, and killed. She had even tried to use Angel against Buffy.

Angel. His name rang through her head like a gunshot shattering the quiet stillness of the night. He was responsible for helping her to come back. As horrid as this place was, she knew she deserved it, and she also knew that it was nowhere near the emotional Hell that continuing down the road that she had been on when she had met back up with Angel here in LA would have proved to be. She had bailed out on that life through his help, but she had not been in time to renew her chance at life. She had only been in time to accept her fate.

The Slayer's dark eyes glanced around her at her tiny cell. These iron bars and cold walls were her fate. This loneliness that ate her from inside her very heart was her fate. No matter how many times she wished things had been different or that she could go back and just change only one thing, this prison was still her fate.

She had killed. She had taken an innocent's life. She had failed her first Watcher, thereby allowing the murder of the first person who had really cared even the slightest bit about her. She had done evil things beyond most women's wildest imaginings. She deserved this Hell at the very least.

Still, though, her heart ached with the heavy knowledge that no one cared about her. Since the day that she had first come into this jail, she had not seen a single person from the outside world except for Angel. He had come often for the first several months, but then his visits had slowly began to decrease until he had simply stopped coming. She could not even remember the last time she had seen him.

She had thought he, of all beings, could understand where she was coming from. After all, he was the only evil Vampire to receive a soul, realize all the evil he had done, and turn to doing good and saving innocents in an attempt to redeem himself. She had been wrong. No one could understand her. No one cared to understand her.

"Merry Christmas!" she heard from a faint voice from the streets outside call to some one unseen. She frowned. She had not been wished a merry Christmas since Sunnydale, and she knew she never would be again. Besides, how could some one have a merry Christmas when they had no one who cared about them?

"Faith?" The quiet voice that whispered her name from the shadows startled her, and she instantly reached for the stake that Angel had slipped her the first night he had come to see her in prison.

"Yeah?" she growled out softly as her hand closed around the familiar, wooden security. Her eyes bore into the shadows as a tall figure stepped forth from it. His head raised, and the lights from outside played on it just enough so that she could make him out.

Faith gasped in surprise as she realized who was approaching her, and the stake dropped from her hand, falling onto the tiny, hard cot she stood on. "Angel?" she breathed his name, afraid to even blink as she might open her eyes again to find he had only been a hallucination. When he nodded, however, and reached her window, she whispered, "You came."

"Of course." He smiled, and for the first time, she realized how endearing his smile could be. "I'm sorry I haven't been around in a while."

"You look like Hell," she observed as her dark eyes surveyed the Vampire before her.

"I've been through Hell."

She quirked an eyebrow. "Again?"

"Not literally," he replied, "though I might as well have been."

"Tell me about it," she whispered, and he began to fill her in on everything she had been missing in the outside world since his last visit. It was Christmas, and she was not alone after all. Maybe all she needed to survive another lonely year was a little more faith in the one person who still gave a damn about her.

**The End**


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